Martin Dempsey: Syrians training to fight Islamic State need protection

Pentagon officials are undecided on how to best protect Syrian moderate opposition fighters after they have been trained and equipped by international security forces to fight Islamic State militants who are terrorizing the country.

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers Wednesday that the “new Syrian forces” would need protection once they “are fielded.”

Gen. Dempsey said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that discussions were continuing about how to shield those forces from battlefield threats and what legal authority might be necessary to support them as they combat adversaries in Syria. That training is expected to commence this spring and span from a couple of weeks to a few months, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter indicated that protection provided to the fighters by the U.S. military likely would be contingent upon “the situation and the circumstance.”

“The forces that we train in Syria, we will have some obligation to support them after their — they’re trained,” he said during a Wednesday briefing at the Pentagon. “We all understand that. And we’re working through what kinds of support and under what conditions we would do so, to include the possibility that, even though they’re trained and equipped to combat [the Islamic State], they could come into contact with forces of the Assad regime.”

Neither Gen. Dempsey nor Mr. Carter said whether that protection would include airstrikes.

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The first wave of U.S. military personnel expect arrive at the facilities where the fighters will train in the coming weeks, Col. Warren said. Those facilities are in Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Over the coming months, the number of U.S. military personnel supporting the advise-and-train program could expand to 1,000.